Category Archives: Environment

In our modern times, achieving happiness seems to be a priority. Only ego validation – in the form of career fulfilment, personal success, and fame, or their less flattering versions of vanity shows and chase for online followers, views, and ‘likes’ – can compete with individual happiness today to the top of the list. And although happiness has, quite understandably, always been an important human goal, there were times where promoting a certain idea or particular beliefs; where defending certain values; where furthering an institution, team, or nation; and, hopefully for some still, where achieving familial and group betterment, all were as or more important than individual happiness. Notwithstanding, great deal of recent talk and media are dedicated to the topic of happiness, as if it is the ultimate end goal of human existence. In societies where some of the religious beliefs have been shed, this has become an all the more important subject.

Without a doubt, happiness is a needed state of experience to all living beings, and the alleviation of suffering in particular is of primary importance. But happiness is the result of something else; it is not an enduring end goal that one finds and clings to like a gold chest. It is wrongly assumed that hedonism is simply the blind search for pleasure, and Epicurus’ advocacy of happiness is quite different from that which is commonly construed today. Moreover, what makes us happy at one stage of our lives is not necessarily the same at another stage; we are endowed with different characters that enable us to be happy differently; and of course, happiness cannot be equated with material prosperity, the latter being only a contributor, if at all.

Happiness is an emotional state that the agent experiences as the result of certain interactions with the outside world, other agents, and/or one’s own being (as with meditation or working out). It is limited in time and is actually quite rare. In fact, we spend most of our time not being overly happy, and it is a normal aspect of the human condition. Otherwise, happiness would cease to be that special thing to which we long. All else in the individual being equal, the type of happiness to which he aspires and which he ultimately realises, and all the consequences of this realisation, are factors of the environment in which he evolves. I have previously talked about the importance of the environment and its influence on the behaviour of any individual, no matter how strong or detached she can be; this is part of the reflection on the influence of the environment, only focused on the particular aspect of happiness, which has become a sort of pop culture torch.

Happiness is a somehow vague concept; it is common for two individuals to say that they are happy while experiencing slightly different feelings in the least. Happiness takes on different variants; it can resemble satisfaction; it can be a psychological state of peace and serenity; it can be an ego trip; it can be the excitement of action after restlessness; it can be tranquillity in cherished routine; it can be a feeling of reward after achieving a long sought objective (a case of dopamine rush); it can result from strong social bonding (a case of oxytocin rush); it can be sensual pleasure; and it can be relief from pain (a case of endorphin rush). There are different ways of reaching happiness; some are more ephemeral than others, and some are physical while others are cognitive. Nevertheless, it is rather clear that most of us need to experience on a not-too-rare of a basis one or several of those feelings, and that some of those ‘feel-good’ emotions can, temporarily or more permanently, compensate for the lack of others. When we lack one particular variant of happiness, we try to compensate for it by seeking more of another, even sometimes to the point of becoming addicted to such compensation.

The variants of happiness and the offsetting of one by another are central to the relation between the environment in which we live and the kind(s) of happiness that our environment favours. Consequently, some environments can be more constructive or pervasive in the manners in which they promote certain variants of happiness and limit others. The environment is the nation, the city, the neighbourhood, the media culture, the Internet, the workplace, and other. In some environments, the prevalent way of achieving happiness is through consumption and spending; in some, it can simply be family and human relations; and in others, it takes place through conflict, and even oddly through violence and warfare. Some people realise happiness through exploring the world of meaning, and some do so by probing truth and science. Prevalent variants of happiness can require increased consumption of particular resources or they can come with greater long-term cost. For instance, we say that inviting people to enjoy smoking leads to a society with higher cancer rates in the future.

In the same way that changes to incentives influence people’s behaviour, changes to the environment can alter the sources from which humans draw most of their happiness. Simple as it is, I find this to be an important sociological fact that is seldom considered when addressing the subject of happiness. Happiness is ultimately shaped by human interactions, fulfilled values, the perimeter in which a human being operates, and the incentives and rewards to which he or she is subject. We can live in environments where all lead to temporary, hindering and resource-consuming forms of happiness; and we can live in environments with enduring, humane and synergistic forms of happiness. Environments change dynamically, and such changes come to impact the way people become and stay happy. And importantly, we often have partial power to alter an environment or take ourselves out of it. The way Buddhist disciples in the mountains draw their happiness from contemplation is different from the way winning gamblers draw their happiness in Las Vegas or Macau; both are at some point feeling happy and fulfilled, and both can feel the satisfaction of having achieved something, only in remarkably distinct ways. The archetypical story of the rich and famous person who ‘has it all’ ending up miserable, with substance abuse problems, and dead by suicide or overdose can be better understood through such environmental considerations.

Once we admit the environmental impact on happiness, then we can deduce two easy correlates: (1) Happiness in societies with different climate, geography, demographics, and cultural environments can be different in kind, and arguably some of it can be more sustainable than other; and (2) Material well being and technological development only favour certain variants of happiness by changing the environment. From personal experience, I am inclined to say that the most enduring forms of happiness in society are those that grow organically and measuredly with culture; in several newly formed or economically changing cities, if you probe, you tend to find human relations weaker, and people falling on consumption and maybe temporary vanity as a way to compensate – repletion is the sovereign source of melancholy, as William James said.

It also reminds me of something J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad said in The Penguin History of the World, when talking about the great development of Ancient Greece while contrasting it with the limited means with which people there lived at the time, “That civilization was rooted still in relatively simple economic patterns; essentially, they were those of the preceding age. […] Such men were the typical Greeks. Some were rich, most of them were probably poor by modern standards, but even now the Mediterranean climate makes a relatively low income more tolerable than it would be elsewhere.” I suspect that, even today, many low-income people find life more tolerable, and even more enjoyable and happy, than the rich living in harsher environments.

One can make different interpretations of the Darwinian theory of evolution, and several of these interpretations continue to preoccupy and divide even the specialists in present evolutionary debates. Notwithstanding, three key consequences from Darwin’s theory are generally agreed by most who subscribe to it; they are that:

Human beings do not possess any fundamentally different nature from that of other living forms; any difference is a matter of degrees of evolution. To quote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man, “Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

Various forms of life constantly struggle and compete to live; some win and some lose in the process. “[…] one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings – namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” Charles Darwin, On the Origins of Species.

Suffering is a fact of life; it is even one of the modus operandi of Nature – after a few documentaries on any wildlife channel, this reality becomes evident rather quickly. “[…] the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.” Charles & Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin.

These ideas in themselves are far from being original to Darwin; he has however the merit of grounding them in scientific theory. That we are all of the same nature has been part of pantheistic religions, such as Hinduism and Taoism, for millennia; that the fittest (in fact, in Darwinian theory it is not necessarily the fittest but, rather, the most adaptive) survives was a subject of Empedocles following the philosophical development of Strife by Heraclitus in Greek Antiquity; and that there is great suffering in the world, or that even life is suffering (or more accurately ‘unsatisfactoriness’) is a pillar of Buddhism with Dukkha.

Being as they are, these three precepts could be taken as eternal and indubitable facts of life; only, part of human civilisation, through greater awareness, is forcing its own, different mark on Earth. Despite a long history of violence and, in many cases, cultural and ethnical exterminations, and despite many human groups today remaining violent and only responding to power, coercion, and fear of death, there is a distinct trend developing in human society: a growing number of us are taking greater ethical measurements from the first of the abovementioned precepts – that we are all not that different – and increasingly rejecting the other two precepts. Many humans in the world today are working against the universality of generalised struggle, violence, and suffering in life, be it within our own species or extending to other species.

This may seem wrong to say at first, when we continuously read about violence and wars in the news; when we hear constant rhetoric about humans abusing and subjecting Nature for their own selfish pleasures; when we know that many species are on the verge of extinction; and when we realise that we farm and kill billions of animals annually for food and clothing. Only, we are not all as evil and cutthroat as the news might indicate. In fact, if we were so, there would be no ‘real’ Nature left in the world today, as we have the technological capability to fully wipe it out. There would also be many more wars than there is, given that we number in the billions on the planet. In judging human nature and its impact on our planet, we often omit the fact of our large number in billions of people walking this earth, which makes the selfish actions of few percentage points substantial in absolute terms; we also tend to forget about the millions of relief and charitable organisations working in the world today, not to mention daily acts of kindness; and we do not account for the billions of people and millions of animals we protect, give to, defend, or make part of our families. When it comes to damages to Nature, for example, our most dangerous action typically stems from lack of awareness about the consequences of our behaviour, magnified by our large numbers and our greater technological footprint, more so than premeditated aggressive will against other forms of life in the name of gene dominance.

Through greater awareness and capacity for ethical judgment, humans could be in the midst of a revolution against classical evolution and many of its selfish and painful ways; we are exerting greater empathy and sympathy from the realisation that we are all fundamentally not that different, and we have the technology to do so. By accepting the first precept, we cannot but become open to forms of compassion, acceptance of other’s personhood, or, at the very least, a certain degree of respect. As such, human differences appear circumstantial and often the result of chance; and by becoming aware of the reality of suffering of all living beings, we come to feel that we are all in it together. We come to care, even when we choose to reject anthropomorphism. Moreover, through the drive for universal ‘pursuit of happiness’, we strive for evermore technology in order to alleviate suffering and dissatisfaction – constant and eternal happiness being a utopia notwithstanding.

In our days, we do not throw away the sickly and the weak in the name of better genes, and we feel more pain when we are made aware of animal suffering and abuse, where classical evolution tells us not to care in the name of our ‘better’ survival. When we see someone in pain, we do not shrug and say this is life, but we look for the technology at our disposal to try to remedy the pain. We do not have to, but we do so nonetheless. We care, and we care even more when we realise that other living beings, human and otherwise, are not fundamentally that different. We have more technology and awareness today to fight this fight, but we are also exposed to greater threats that make this fight more consequential. In response to those who argue that there must be some general indirect utility behind our compassionate actions within the human community and outside it, I genuinely doubt that we always do so strictly from the point of view of maximisation of some general utility, intentional or otherwise. We are social and affective beings, and it is often enough for us to realise that what is around us is not of an alien nature; that the animal condition is not stranger to ours; and that we are all small in the grand scheme of things, to extend this sociability and affection beyond a small group of individuals. Other mammals have also been witnessed to act in similarly compassionate ways within their species and outside it. And the more we become conscious that what is around us is not that different from us, the more difficult it becomes for us to dismiss the other one as a mere threat to our existence, a competing gene, a tool, or food.

Respecting a living being does not preclude you from defending yourself from it if threatened or in the case of animals not under the threat of extinction killing it for food on need basis; it does however preclude you from disposing of it unnecessarily and recklessly without the slightest awareness; it does also preclude you from exerting on it unwarranted pain and remaining agnostic towards, or even enjoying, its pain. There is a general trend today towards rejecting blind servitude and commoditisation of other living beings – it is a key reason for why brutal practices in the food industry are often kept hidden from a public eye increasingly unaccepting of its practices. Only, we all do so imperfectly; we generally care less about people with whom we do not associate; we might give money to a charity but pass by a person in distress with indifference; we tend to care more about charismatic animals than others; and we still largely disagree about the criteria to use for defining legal and moral personhood, such as subjectivity, consciousness, or emotional reciprocity. Nevertheless, we are bringing our own morality into Nature. We have a choice, and, whether we want it or not, we are continuously making this choice. Thinking that we can leave Nature to be and just watch it develop in isolation is simplistic; we cannot but interact with our environment, under all its forms, as all things interact. By the fact of breathing we interact with our environment. We can look to minimise the effects of our living and our technology, but we cannot look to eliminate them. I argue that we should not look to remove ourselves entirely from the equation even if we can; and I say so while being a conservationist at heart.

Our stand against ruthless evolutionary ways is far from certain. Our technological capabilities are quite meaningful today and our numbers are great in comparison with other animals. Both these facts make the battle a highly unpredictable one; it is enough for a minority to steer in the wrong direction and put technological capabilities to the wrong use for precipitous developments to ensue. But even if we ultimately lose the battle of bringing a balanced morality in our approach to Nature – one that is different from selfish, cutthroat, and unstable domination – it is a cause worth fighting for in the name of collective identity. In the long run, the whole universe will change including the existence (or not) of our own species; we therefore have a choice in the matter regardless of conjectural long-term outcome.

The classical model of evolutionary theory goes something like this: each form of life only cares, directly and indirectly, about the preservation and the propagation of its own genes (or DNA). Each gene cares about itself and strives to conquer as much as possible of the living world. And in this race between various DNAs, the ones which endure the longest with changes in environmental conditions, the ones which compete better, and the ones which mutate more effectively under extreme environmental changes are those which are likely to persevere the longest, albeit in an evolved manner, in the phenomenon of Life in general. Darwin, who was a highly sensitive and tormented recluse, and who reportedly turned physically ill when watching or hearing people in pain, was astounded by the prominence of suffering and strife in life; evolutionary competition seemed to him to be the reasonable explanation. Only, this classical interpretation of evolutionary theory (the “selfish gene” theory) might turn out to be the wrong interpretation. Instead of selfish DNA, there is actually the possibility of selfish RNA (it is a possibility and not a proven fact). In a paper published earlier this year (cf. The ribosome as a missing link in the evolution of life, Journal of Theoretical Biology, February 2015, Volume 367), Meredith and Robert Root-Bernstein have argued that all life forms could simply be perceived as different homes for ribosomes. rRNA or Ribosomal RNA might actually turn out to be of greater importance than DNA, and it might have preceded DNA in the evolutionary genesis, rendering the latter a mere stored assembly instruction. To quote from the article, “Ribosomal RNA, in short, is not just a structural scaffold for proteins, but the vestigial remnant of a primordial genome that may have encoded a self-organizing, self-replicating, auto-catalytic intermediary between macromolecules and cellular life.” Superior DNAs might have indeed prevailed in life forms out of evolutionary circumstances, but DNA propagation may not actually be the primary objective of Life; replication of ribosomes could be more important for Life, and that means seeking all ways of replication. And I may be going too far with my conjecture by saying that we could even envisage the ‘selfish’ RNA leaving more room for compassion and refusal of suffering as a mode of being than the selfish DNA.

“Much love much trial, but what an utter desert is life without love.” Charles Darwin.

It is time for a new blog post. But instead of writing a short article or expressing my thoughts on a particular subject, I would kindly ask my followers this time to take few minutes and research online ‘The Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ or ‘The North Pacific Gyre’.

Gyres are an important, and normal, part of oceanic and maritime currents on our planet. They are responsible for determining and regulating climates in different parts of the world and help transport heat and moisture from one region to another. For example, they can explain in part why two regions of the world at the same latitude exhibit different climate patterns (the Gulf Stream is a famous illustration). Only, today, the North Pacific Gyre has become a monstrous garbage landfill in the middle of the northern part of the Pacific Ocean – some would even call it the largest landfill in the world. It is indeed the largest landfill of plastic, and much of the plastic, which breaks down but does not degrade for very long, thrown into the Northern Pacific, makes its way into this gigantic rotating landfill.

Here is an article from HowStuffWorks describing the magnitude of the issue, and there is plenty of other material online that can be as informative, or more.

This is yet another example of the unforeseen consequences of our actions, which can ultimately reach an alarming magnitude and result in long-term challenges to all of us sharing this same habitat that is our Earth. As with all such global issues, and this does not only apply to the environment, what is more important than pointing fingers or looking for someone to pay the price is the simple awareness and realisation of such facts, and to keep some of the possible remote consequences of our actions fresh in our minds.

All reasonable humans would (I hope) feel the need to do something about such global issues, but only if they were aware of them in the first place. Hence, it all starts with awareness…

So what can we derive from this realisation? What can we do when we accept the fact that a world with high concentration of CO2 for long periods of time is the most likely future we are heading towards?

We can first acknowledge that political wrangling at the global level may not be the most optimal way of obtaining the results we need, i.e. reaching this general plateau as soon as possible and then bring down again the level of CO2 in this bathtub which is the Earth’s atmosphere, all while disrupting to the minimum economic development. Nor are we likely to obtain them by a cumbersome taxing mechanism, which can easily turn into a system of global lying and deceiving.

We can secondly come to terms with the fact that we will live in an atmosphere with a higher level of CO2 in it, for long periods of time, despite our best efforts, and we can focus a great deal of scientific work on what does that exactly mean, beyond just climate change, to the fauna and flora, to the level of acidity of the oceans, and to biodiversity in general. In other words, we need to develop solid mitigation plans to defend quality of life and ensure that we do not have a mass extinction of species on our hand down the line.

Third, we can work aggressively on ways to make accessible means of energy production as clean and as efficient as possible. As an example, instead of bedevilling energy production from coal, and instead of spending large amounts of time and effort figuring out how to tax it, we can rather concentrate our effort and money on making ‘clean coal’ energy production economically attractive. Coal is an abundant source of energy on our planet, and the nations that need energy the most to fight poverty and increase economic prosperity (such as China and India) have it easily accessible in their own territory. We then ask, what is more realistic and productive, bullying these nations into not using coal when they are really struggling with energy issues or figuring out new ways (which are scientifically possible) of using this coal with a lower environmental footprint?

And fourth, we can continue to expand energy-efficient equipment and processes around the world, from energy-efficient cars, to more efficient ways of transmitting, distributing, and storing electricity, to energy-efficient household equipment, to smarter ways of providing public lighting.

The third and fourth measures in the above fall in the category of helping reduce the increase in CO2 emissions down the line – they are unlikely to be enough to reduce CO2 emissions in absolute terms given the requirements for economic development of the world’s population and the percentage of that population who is still under the middle-class line. Hence, the most hopeful and effective way of really addressing the problem of net addition of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere over the long-term lies in devising better technological ways of absorbing back some of this CO2 released in the atmosphere. Reabsorption of CO2 by oceans carries with it negative effects if done in excessive manners, including a general increase of the acidity of seawater and its impact on fragile coral reefs and some of the marine life. But reabsorption of CO2 by rock and land, if carefully done, can be more long lasting – this is what is called in technical terms ‘artificial carbon sequestration’. The key unit in such a sequestration process is what is commonly called a ‘CO2 pump’ which has essentially as role to absorb some of the CO2 present in the atmosphere and convert it and store it back in land. It is worth noting that the term ‘CO2 pump’ is more of an umbrella term, and there exists different chemical and mechanical ways of absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere and transforming it.

From the behaviour of human beings who largely oppose giving up a certain acquired convenient lifestyle or making sacrifices unless under clear and pressing threat, and from the general nature of world affairs, it seems to us easier politically to agree on a way of sequestrating back some of the emitted CO2 rather than policing every nation into limiting its emissions. But it is not something easily achievable politically nonetheless. There is a cost associated with setting up and operating such large scale sequestration infrastructures, and it is likely that the different nations around the world will give themselves to the game of trying to pass on the cost of such an infrastructure, if it existed and were economically viable, from one to the other. And so we see that our only salvation from the problem of perpetual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere seems to be technological, but mostly on the CO2 absorption side rather than the CO2 emission side, but not without some minimal form of international political agreement. This may likely be easier in the case of CO2 absorption as it does not require as much of a sacrifice of lifestyle or economic development for the sake of reducing CO2.

The highly lauded goal of reducing the rate of increase in CO2 concentration over the coming decades is indeed ironic on many levels. First, it does not solve any environmental problem really – the bathtub continues to fill up, only slightly more slowly. In other words, it is asking to push the can few years down the road without offering any radical solution. Second, it is not entirely clear how different the environmental impact would be for a difference of say 100-150 ppm between the concentration of CO2 in the good case scenario (where everybody magically agrees, and quickly, to try to limit CO2 emission at the expense of other priorities, such as economic growth and poverty reduction) and in the bad case scenario (where all nations continue to operate as usual).

So in other words, the current approach consists of engaging into very difficult and contentious political debates, for simply slowing down a reality that is made inevitable, for ‘gains’ in terms of alleviating the environmental impact that are largely unclear. And we are hoping to achieve some positive results in the global political sphere knowing that:

(1) There exists a huge political opposition against forcing a control on CO2 emissions by the two largest emitters of CO2 in the world today (China and the United States);

(2) The rise of the world population into the middle class, and what is required in terms of energy consumption to get there, is still at its infancy. For example, according to the latest data on global wealth, ~92% of the world’s adult population, i.e. 3.3 billion people not including children, are still under the $100,000 threshold of wealth; and

(3) Humans have a generally complacent nature. Let us face it, we human beings rarely come together and sacrifice on a large scale unless we are under a clear, visible, and immediate existential threat, not of the diffused or delayed kind the increase of CO2 concentration results in.

We leave the reader to reflect on all of this for a moment.

No one is aiming from all the political debate about CO2 emissions to offer an effective way of reducing the levels of CO2 in the bathtub (which essentially requires this delta not only to be reduced but also to turn negative) in the foreseeable future, and actually very few are hoping that this delta will in reality decrease. This is how far is the reality of the numbers from what is debated politically and in the media, and it is for these reasons that aiming at reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere in the centuries to come seems to us like a lost battle (except for an unexpected technological breakthrough of a particular kind coupled with the right international political will for it, a scenario we shall talk about at the end). Again, these are the views not of someone who has a political or economic agenda that benefits from perpetuating the current way of emitting CO2, but of someone who is environmentally concerned but a realist nonetheless, with some exposure to the business and political decision-making process.

It is important to realise the reality of these numbers when it comes to the debate over CO2 control. There is a general wrong perception that with some global concerted effort, we can easily bring down the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere over the coming decades. This is wrong, misleading, and highly unproductive; it conveys false expectations to the general public. We are heading towards a world with higher concentration of CO2 and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – the uncertainty is rather around what levels of concentration we will ultimately reach before a general plateau or a steady level of CO2 concentration takes place. We need to care about the levels of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, not only in the context of global warming, but no matter what our idealistic desires on the subject are, we need to look at facts as they are and contrast them with the reality of our human affairs; we should not be carried away by misplaced romanticism and wishful scenarios.

Unfortunately, politics around CO2 emissions and control are largely divided between two camps: those with no concern whatsoever over CO2 levels and those possessed by a idealistic, wishful scenario that does not take properly into account the true nature of human political and economic dynamics.

Let us consider the details and explain why we are seeing a world with a high concentration of CO2, with all of its consequences, as inevitable, and why the current political and technological approach to the problem is largely inadequate.

The most effective way of looking at things is to consider the Earth’s atmosphere as a bathtub: it has a certain amount of CO2 in it; it gets filled constantly with more CO2 from human-related activity (mainly combustion of any material containing carbon, whether it is wood, fuel, coal, or other) and the occasional geologically-caused emissions (such as volcanic eruptions); and it gets relieved constantly through CO2 absorption in mainly three ways: by vegetation, by oceans, and by land. If the bathtub is filled faster than it gets relieved, it fills up, and the general level of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up; if the quantity of CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere is higher than the one emitted, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere goes down. This is pretty simple indeed.

It is important to note here that the three ‘natural’ methods of absorbing CO2 mentioned above are rather slow, and the one that is the most effective at absorbing CO2 over the long-term is actually the slowest (that is carbon natural sequestration by land). The problem with trees and vegetation absorbing CO2 is that they can be cut and used again, which does not really constitute an effective way of absorbing CO2 over the long-term, unless large stocks of flora are left untouched on Earth and are not subject to destruction by forest fires and by humans, whether intentionally or not.

Currently, the average annual level of CO2 concentration in Earth’s atmosphere is close to 400 ppm which is very high by the standard of the timespan of homo sapiens on Earth (last ~200,000 years), of the most recent Ice Age we are still technically in, and likely of the most recent millions of years, but not high at all in the context of the billions of years of Earth’s existence where we can find periods of exceptionally high presence of CO2 in the atmosphere largely above the 400 ppm level (some models even talk about 7,000 ppm for some periods millions of years ago…). This concentration level fluctuates over a certain year, sometimes below 400, sometimes above, but the average has been increasing steadily over the past several decades and is set to break through the 400-ppm barrier soon (if it has not already done so). The main contributor to this increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere over the past couple of centuries is indeed human activity; humans, by their daily activities, are causing greater emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere which are not absorbed as quickly by the natural prevailing methods of CO2 absorption.

The difference today between emission and absorption exceeds 2 ppm per year; this means that, every year, the average level of CO2 in the bathtub that is the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing by more than 2 ppm. And this difference, this ‘delta’, is actually widening every year: we are pouring more CO2 in the bathtub, faster with time. We do not actually dispose of accurate data concerning the details, i.e. how much is actually emitted, and how much is actually absorbed every year by young forests, oceans, and land, as it is indeed quite complicated to measure these details accurately. What we know with more certainty is the resulting net increase of CO2 in the atmosphere year-over-year, in addition to general ideas of the pace of CO2 absorption by vegetation, oceans, and land.

And now here is the most ironic part about the entire political debate concerning the reduction of CO2 emissions: most efforts today aim at decelerating the increase in this delta between CO2 emission and CO2 absorption (which today slightly exceeds 2 ppm per year as we said) over the coming years. And this is the best this political discussion can hope to achieve if it succeeds. In other words, all what this tedious political wrangling we hear about in the news, with its low chance of success, in generally difficult economic times, can hope to achieve is a smaller increase in CO2 concentration by 2100 than if we do nothing. So instead of taking us from ~400 ppm today to (for example) 700 ppm by 2100, what this political wrangling can only hope to realise is a target of (again for example) say 600 ppm by 2100.

I would like to address in this four-part blog series the subject of carbon dioxide (CO2) and its growing concentration in the atmosphere, beyond the politically-charged climate change debate. We ought to pay attention to the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere, not only in the context of global warming, but also because of its other less discussed effects, some of which are rather less controversial. I shall start by being blunt: in my opinion, thinking that we can reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere over the coming decades by some global political agreement is wishful thinking – this ship has long sailed. We are headed towards a world with a higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, regardless of the outcome of the current global political debate. It is a reality that we have to deal with and discuss seriously, independently of whether we like this environmental outcome or not (I personally do not like it but still do not see a way that we can realistically avoid it).

In the below, I will start by explaining why the problem of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is important and can have multiple unintended consequences of which we need to be aware and for which we need to be rightly prepared. I will then explain why, in my view, the goal of reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide is looking more and more like a lost game. Following which, I will propose some ideas on how we should go about things if we recognise the fact that we are heading towards a more CO2-rich atmosphere for many generations to come. And finally, not being able to completely rid myself from some hopeful environmental optimism, I will show where I could be wrong in my view and what could be one of the possible scenarios by which the cloud of worries from the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere could unexpectedly dissipate.

Whether greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide or methane) are a contributor, as in single most important contributor or in conjunction with others, to the increase in average temperatures on Earth’s surface and low atmosphere over the past recent decades will not be the subject of discussion in this blog. Whether the Sun’s activity, including the levels of solar magnetic winds, are the actual indirect contributor to global warming through their effects on Earth’s atmosphere (and, among others, cloud formations) will not be the subject of focus either. This blog is not about just climate change; what I would like to narrow the discussion to here is a more simple fact: the general increase in the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere, its evolution over the past centuries, and notably recent decades, and the contribution of human activity to this increase in CO2 concentration. In addition to its effects on climate change, an increase in CO2 presence in Earth’s atmosphere has several other consequences, including an increase in the level of acidity of oceans, lower nutritional content of plants grown in higher concentration CO2 environments, as well as changes in the general mix of vegetation caused by a higher presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. The importance when it comes to CO2 concentration is not in how many CO2 particles are actually in the atmosphere (which in absolute terms remains very low) but, rather, what is the long-term impact of relatively elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere on other phenomena on Earth we do consider important.

From looking at the numbers, observing the general technological, economic, and political trends in the world around, and contrasting all of this with what we generally see in terms of human behaviour, it seems to us that it is very unlikely that the general levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will be reduced or even stabilised in the foreseeable decades, despite all pretence to political talk about tackling global warming and all current efforts by environmental and climate science agencies. This is generally consistent with the current projections of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, which are expected to be in the 500-1,000 ppm (parts per million) range for the year 2100 – a wide range indeed. We are not stating this to attack the efforts or genuine intentions of any particular protagonist(s) in this matter; and we are not saying this in order to promote an apocalyptic or complacent attitude of the kind that says “since things are going to get bad and we can not fix them, why not make them worse for the sake of short-term benefits”. We are simply stating what seems to us to be the outcome with the highest likelihood by simply looking at facts and having a degree of realism about human behaviour.